Inquiry Into Bernie Sanderss Wife May Tarnish His Liberal Luster
WASHINGTON — A federal investigation into a long-ago land deal by Senator Bernie Sanders’s wife is threatening to take some of the luster off the senator’s populist appeal, attaching the phrase “bank fraud” to the biography of a politician practically sainted on the left for his stands against “millionaires and billionaires.”
Mr. Sanders, a Vermont independent, is still riding high on popularity from his presidential campaign, delivering rousing speeches to cheering progressives in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
But he has been shadowed by talk of a deepening investigation into his wife’s role in a 2010 land deal for a Vermont college that ultimately contributed to her ouster as its president. His wife, Jane Sanders, has hired a lawyer to represent her as federal authorities look into a $10 million sale of about 33 acres of lakefront property by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington to Burlington College. Ms. Sanders was hoping to relocate and expand the institution.
The couple and many of their supporters maintain that the investigation is politically motivated and that it was set in motion by the Vermont state chairman for Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, Brady Toensing, who filed a complaint with the local United States attorney’s office in January 2016 on behalf of the diocese’s parishioners.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/us/politics/bernie-sanders-jane-sanders-investigation-burlington-college.html
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